“Failing” into Success
I’ve failed often.
And I have not always handled it well. My elementary school PE teacher, Mr. McGarvey would provide evidence to that sentiment. I received more than a handful of “Needs Improvements” on my report cards for “Sportsmanship” as I navigated my way through Easton Catholic. If I did not get an “A” on a test or lived up to my standards in some way, I struggled to move past it.
Some would have called it perfectionism, but I did not. To younger me, it was failure. I spent most of my life playing a game that is embedded in failing. Succeeding three out of ten times means you are pretty dang good. Yet, baseball humbled me in ways you can’t imagine. The loneliness of a strikeout with the bases loaded haunted me. The isolation I would feel after an error that allowed two runs to score felt like the spotlight in my nightmare. Humbling moment after humbling moment. And while it took me years to figure out that those moments were part of the journey, baseball was what turned that tide. More on that in a bit…
When you carry high standards for yourself, failure tends to become the familiar friend you sort of want to go to the bar with, but try to talk yourself into avoiding. It challenges you to consider lessening the expectations. Sure, doing so might bring a win here and there. Let’s be honest though, those are not the wins you set out for originally. Those are complacent wins. While I hate losing, I have learned that sometimes winning has caused me to settle. I tend to avoid setting the bar higher. Trying to avoid failure entirely only keeps you hidden from the success. So I have learned to seek the challenge that could lead to a loss.
Allow yourself to fail and when you do, consider it a win. As I continued to mature (it took a while), I realized that within every loss in my life, there were lessons that clung to them like security chips. I like to call them checkpoints. If a lesson in the classroom failed, a reflection would bring the silver lining into vision. If a conversation with a student or parent went sideways, a moment of consideration would lead to a more successful one the next time. Any argument or strained relationship, I reset my view and figured out a way to walk with that person toward an understanding.
Checkpoints. No true failures. Those became figments of the imagination. The focus should be on the lesson to push you in the direction of the next step toward the endgame, whatever that may be.
My challenge to you is to accept your missteps, big or small, as a checkpoint on the way to success. They are breather moments. A pause to allow for you to collect yourself, look forward, and remember the difficulty and purpose of this journey. It is not meant to be easy. If succeeding on first attempts, every attempt for that matter, was supposed to be a cakewalk, everyone would be walking around wearing gold medals. What fun would that be? So stumble. Fall down. Fail. Fail again. Fail harder. But don’t get caught in that. Don’t stop there. Learn from it. Try a new way. Look from a new perspective. Ask for help. It is simple to become obsessed with the momentary failure and stop altogether. The only real loss happens when we decide to end the journey ourselves. When we accept those stumbles as the final destination? That’s when we actually lose.
And we are back to that lesson brought to you (really me) by baseball…
When I was 15 years old (the boy in the photo), I played one of the worst games in my career. It came on the heels of a pretty bad stretch of games. My name was in the paper for all the wrong reasons. And the next day when I showed up to the park, I laid my bag down and trotted to the outfield to start stretching and throwing. When I came back, there was a piece of paper sitting on top of my black batting gloves.
“A tree is best measured when its down, and so it is with people.” - Carl Sundberg.
I still have no idea who put it in there, but it changed my mindset. I had obviously been down on myself, but the message was clear. How would I let these failures affect me? I could allow it to hold me down or I could reinvent myself, using this recent hiccup as a reset…a checkpoint. Three hits, three runs, and a win later, I figured out that these “failures” that had haunted me for so long were nothing more than reminders.
With life, everything is a process. I can’t tell you what your final victory is because I have come to learn that it is a series of small victories that continue to make me better. I venture to guess that true victory is becoming the best version of yourself every day. Sometimes that comes with a slip and fall. I feel confident in saying that if you let failure stop you for too long, you miss out on that feeling of growth; The feeling of having successful moment after successful moment.
Don’t miss that feeling. Go challenge yourself, and if you fall, simply stand back up and search within yourself for the lesson. When you find it, let it lead you to all of those small victories.
Much Love,
Mike
